Eidos Montreal Outlines Deus Ex's Future

A blog post from Eidos Montreal's head of studio David Anfossi shares the developer's plans for the future of the Deus Ex franchise -- beginning with the release of Human Revolution's second screen-centric Director's Cut, and a new game for next-gen platforms.

Eidos Montreal's studio head David Anfossi is excited about the future of Deus Ex, and had a few choice tidbits of information to share in a blog post today.

The first piece of news is that Deus Ex: Human Revolution's Director's Cut edition will be released for Wii U, PS3, Xbox 360 and PC on October 22. The new version places a strong focus on the "second screen experience" via SmartGlass, PlayStation Vita and Wii U Gamepad. The trailer shows how this will work on Wii U -- presumably it will be pretty similar on other platforms, with the exception of off-screen play. You'll be able to use the second screen as a radar, inventory screen or to access the Infolog during play. With the Infolog, you'll be able to take photographs and annotate them, then share them online. Looting can be performed via the touchscreen, too, allowing you to review what an enemy was carrying at the time you dealt with them, then keep the spoils for yourself. Hacking can be performed on the touchscreen as well, allowing for you to more quickly respond to different situations and control various technological marvels. Finally, you'll also be able to use the second screen as a scope and "smartvision" device to pinpoint enemy locations.

Perhaps more interesting, however, is the news that Eidos Montreal seems to have the intention of expanding Deus Ex into a much bigger franchise. Branded Deus Ex Universe, Anfossi writes that "the concept... is to create an ongoing, expanding and connected game world built across a generation of core games. It's a commitment on our part to deliver meaningful content that expands the franchise on a regular basis and to deliver a deep conspiracy that will span several connected Deus Ex games, creating a more immersive and richer experience than ever before."

It's all meaningless marketing buzzwords, of course, but it does at least mean we can expect some more Deus Ex games in the near future, the first of which is coming to next-gen platforms and PC. The new, currently unnamed game, will explore trans-humanist segregation, which will be a backdrop to the new game, which focuses on the separation between classes and the desire for a "cyber renaissance."

It won't stop there, though. The intention behind Deus Ex Universe is to expand the franchise into other media such as tablet and smartphone games, books and graphic novels -- much like BioWare did with Mass Effect. The world of Deus Ex is certainly interesting enough to stand up to some "expanded universe"-type content, but let's just hope it doesn't turn into yet another annualized franchise we'll all be sick of in a year or two.

To whet your appetite for the next-gen Deus Ex game, here's a piece of concept art. What do you think?

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That portable Deus Ex has been released already, right? I'm really curious to know how well it performed, financially.

Not going to lie, I hope it was a miserable failure. Just to serve as example to other big companies; if you want to make a version of your AAA franchise for the portable market, make it for a portable CONSOLE, not phones. Just because there's only a couple million owners of a certain portable console out there, as opposed to dozens or hundreds of millions with smartphones, DOES NOT mean you'll get better sales on the smartphones.

And then send that memo to Squeenix, who didn't want to localize Type-0, and would rather make a smartphone FF instead.

Can they make a game that I don't get bored of halfway through and finally come back to six months later to 'get it over with'?

Sorry, but it's true. There's only so many times you can arrive at yet another warehouse full of crates and guards before you get bored. DX:HR had better city hubs than the previous games but those didn't last.Edited October 2013 by metalangel

I just hope it's less yellow. I loved the original, but just couldn't get myself to ever play the latest one because it was way too yellow. Did anyone ever make a "not so much yellow" mod for it or anything?